ISI agents held in Howrah
The Statesman
January 16, 2008

Two suspected agents of the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) were arrested from Shalimar near Shibpur in Howrah last night.

Mr. Rajiv Kumar, inspector-general of police (Operations), Criminal Investigation Department (CID), said that Sheikh Alamgir (42) and Shamim Akhtar (46) had been acting as the agents of ISI. They used to pass on secret information of the country's security forces to the ISI. They were produced before the Howrah district and session judge court and were later remanded in police custody for two weeks.

According to reports, Sheikh, a resident of Feni district in Bangladesh, had come to India three years ago and started spying for ISI in order to earn a quick buck. Before joining the ISI three years ago, he had contacted his counterpart in India, Shamim, at the latter's house in Varanasi.

They used to contact retired officers of some security forces of the country and spent huge amounts of money to collect information from them.

Map of a base camp of Indian Army, some CDs, a few mobile phones and SIM cards were recovered from them, an officer of the CID's special operation Group (SOG), said. They passed on information to their accomplices in Bangladesh and Pakistan through Internet. Police suspect that some retired soldiers of the country's security agencies are also involved in the racket.

The officer said that Shamim owned a house in Varanasi and had visited Pakistan, where his father stayed several times over the past few years. As he has a house in Varanasi, Shamim`s travel from Pakistan to India had never aroused suspicion in the security agencies, said the officer. The CID officers had recently received a tip off from a central security agency that the duo was part of an ISI module and had come to the city. "We learnt that they would contact a retired Jawan of a central security agency at Shibpur. They were picked up from near a water tank at Shibpur last night.

The suspected ISI agents were taken into CIDs headquarters at Bhawani Bhaban. Senior police officers, including Mr. Kumar, interrogated the duo and learnt about some other contacts of the ISI in the state, the officer said adding that the raids were being conducted in some other places to round up the accomplices of the duo. Police said that telephone numbers of some retired soldiers of country's security agencies had been found saved on the mobile phone of the ISI agents.